PX 2017

Welcome to the 2nd Edition of the Programming Experience Workshop

Note: If you intend to participate in the PX/17 workshop, please note that the workshop will follow the Writers’ Workshop format. For that, please download and read allsubmissions in advance.

Imagine a software development task: some sort of requirements and specification including performance goals and perhaps a platform and programming language. A group of developers head into a vast workroom. In that room they discover they need to explore the domain and the nature of potential solutions—they need exploratory programming.

The Programming Experience (PX) Workshop is about what happens in that room when one or a couple of programmers sit down in front of computers and produce code, especially when it’s exploratory programming. Do they create text that is transformed into running behavior (the old way), or do they operate on behavior directly (“liveness”); are they exploring the live domain to understand the true nature of the requirements; are they like authors creating new worlds; does visualization matter; is the experience immediate, immersive, vivid and continuous; do fluency, literacy, and learning matter; do they build tools, meta-tools; are they creating languages to express new concepts quickly and easily; and curiously, is joy relevant to the experience?

Correctness, performance, standard tools, foundations, and text-as-program are important traditional research areas, but the experience of programming and how to improve and evolve it are the focus of this workshop, and in this edition we would like to focus on exploratory programming.

Call for Contributions

Welcome to the 2nd Edition of the Programming Experience Workshop

Note: If you intend to participate in the PX/17 workshop, please note that the workshop will follow the Writers’ Workshop format. For that, please download and read allsubmissions in advance.

Abstract

Imagine a software development task: some sort of requirements and specification including performance goals and perhaps a platform and programming language. A group of developers head into a vast workroom. In that room they discover they need to explore the domain and the nature of potential solutions—they need exploratory programming.

The Programming Experience (PX) Workshop is about what happens in that room when one or a couple of programmers sit down in front of computers and produce code, especially when it’s exploratory programming. Do they create text that is transformed into running behavior (the old way), or do they operate on behavior directly (“liveness”); are they exploring the live domain to understand the true nature of the requirements; are they like authors creating new worlds; does visualization matter; is the experience immediate, immersive, vivid and continuous; do fluency, literacy, and learning matter; do they build tools, meta-tools; are they creating languages to express new concepts quickly and easily; and curiously, is joy relevant to the experience?

Correctness, performance, standard tools, foundations, and text-as-program are important traditional research areas, but the experience of programming and how to improve and evolve it are the focus of this workshop, and in this edition we would like to focus on exploratory programming.

Submissions

Submissions are solicited for Programming Experience 2017 (PX/17). The thrust of the workshop is to explore the human experience of programming—what it feels like to program, or more accurately, what it should feel like. The technical topics include exploratory programming, live programming, authoring, representation of active content, visualization, navigation, modularity mechanisms, immediacy, literacy, fluency, learning, tool building, and language engineering.

Submissions by academics, professional programmers, and non-professional programmer are welcome. Submissions can be in any form and format, including but not limited to papers, presentations, demos, videos, panels, debates, essays, writers’ workshops, and art. Presentation slots will be between 30 minutes and one hour, depending on quality, form, and relevance to the workshop. Submissions directed toward publication should be so marked, and the program committee will engage in peer review for all such papers. Video publication will be arranged.

There is no page limit on submitted papers and essays. It is, however, the responsibility of the authors to keep the reviewers interested and motivated to read the paper. Reviewers are under no obligation to read all or even a substantial portion of a paper or essay if they do not find the initial part of it interesting.

Review

Papers and essays labeled as publications will undergo standard peer review; other submissions will be reviewed for relevance and quality; shepherding will be available.

We will be following a variant of the writers’ workshop format used in the software patterns community. This format works well when the goals include improving the form or presentation of the ideas as well as improving or understanding the ideas themselves.

In the writers’ workshop:

A moderator leads and directs the discussion.

We review the pieces and their ideas one at a time.

In general, the authors whose work is under review are silent.

When discussing form, the following kinds of questions will be asked:

What did you gather / understand from the piece?

What aspects of the piece worked well to present the ideas?

What aspects need improvement? (These comments must be in the form of suggestions, not criticisms.)

When discussing the ideas, the following kinds of questions will be asked:

What are the ideas?

Which ideas seem like good ones (and why)?

Which ideas need improvement or elimination? (Make positive suggestions when you can.)

At the end the authors ask questions of the group.

This is the basic format, but we adjust the flow according to the needs of the group and the way the discussion is going. It is formal to ensure all the important points are covered.